Time
by Love Lost Contest
Summary: Time is a gift and a curse. Some people can't just deal with it and some people can't just wait for it to end.


Title: Time

Characters: Bella/Edward

Rating: T

Word Count: 2,358

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, just a dog in another country and a lot of movie tickets.

Summary: Time is a gift and a curse. Some people can't just deal with it and some people can't just wait for it to end.

**To see all entries in the "Love Lost" Contest, please visit the profile: .net/u/2458839/Love_Lost_Contest**

**Warning: There is a lot of hurt and pain, rape, abortion, suicide. Please don't read if you are sensitive to these topics. Listening to the Remember Me soundtrack is really good for this story.**

^O^

There is no excuse for my actions. I don't have evidence to back me up or witnesses to talk for me. No body can defend me and nothing can excuse what I did.

I was the one that left. I abandoned him and no matter how many times I try to convince my psych and heart that I did it because I love him, it still pains me.

It feels that it has been so long since the last time that I saw him or felt him, or kissed him. Sometimes it gets to the point that I go through the day just imagining that nothing has changed. That he stills with me and I hadn't left.

The first month wasn't the hardest because the pain is still the same and after all this time the ache hasn't changed. This monster that lives inside my body to make me suffer can't lessen itself, it just grows and develops new strategies to make me hurt, and whine, and cry, and feel hell alive.

After that day, I went back to our house four times. Twice I got to the point of trying to open the door and once I almost convince myself to wait for him without remembering that he wasn't going to come back, that the house was empty, just with the memories of once being the scenery of a happy fairytale, one that I had destroyed.

In my life everything became dark and routine. I did things just because they were necessary. I ate, I had human moments, and I slept. I took showers and I breathed just because they were needed by my system. My body insisted on living but my heart just desired to stop beating and give up.

After five months I lost my job. My boss claimed that my image was becoming too inappropriate to eight-year-olds. I didn't say anything or claimed that it was unfair. I understood that a zombie without a heart, or light, or senses wasn't a good influence for young minds. My kids needed somebody that was pretty, happy, bright and overall alive.

I moved from Forks. I decided to not risk him seeing me like this. I knew that he didn't know my address, but still the possibilities were there and that uncertainty and the hope were too much. Not knowing my future was too much.

My dad the chief of police tried to convince me to stay, even offered to hunt him down just for me to have peace. He didn't understand that nothing could change anything. I made my decision and by that I ruined what could have been a beautiful destiny, a peaceful ending, a happy life.

Eight months after that day I had my last glimpse of him, I went to say goodbye to Alice. She hadn't known from me for more that three months and I thought I owe her at least a proper goodbye. I didn't see a lot, just the top of his bronze hair when Alice opened the door. She was his sister so I understood his presence. I pleaded her with my eyes and whispers not to say anything, to not say that I went there ever and to just follow me and talk to me for the last time. She yelled that it was the landlord and walked with me towards the indoor parking lot, she cried on my shoulder over my departure. She tried to convince me that he still wanted me and that everything would be all right. I told her that she didn't know that, she didn't know what happened; she didn't know that I left.

She asked for some kind of communication. I told her to try my email. I didn't want to be contacted. I just wanted to suffer alone and erase myself from what once was a happy full existence.

Eight months after that day I took all my savings, I left my parents, I left the Cullens, I left America, I left him. I left everything.

Nobody noticed, nobody asked and nobody would ever understand. It was my fault, which was what I wanted them to know.

My first year in London was amazing and after each day that I was able to smile over the wonders of the ancient city I felt guilty. The knowledge that two years ago I was happy and able to smile hunted my thoughts and dreams. My unconscious reminded me of the sin that I had committed; the immortal crime and the betrayal.

My life became a routine. Each morning I would wake up by the sound of a terrible scream. I would work in the bookstore trying to forget about that dream. I would eat and then forget what it was. I wouldn't let anyone touch me. I was too guilty and disgusting. And then I would surrender to sleep, to enable my vocal chords to scream themselves to exhaustion until the next morning for everything to start again.

Three years after that day I got an email from my mother pleading me to come back. I ignored it. I was too nothing for them to see me. After three years I realized that in some way I really did love them and him, so much that I was capable of taking myself out of their lives because it was necessary. I was too filthy.

Alice sent me an email telling me that she was having her first child and that he was dating somebody. For my surprise I felt relieved by the knowledge that he could have a happy life with someone clean and honest, the opposite of me.

I spent eight months living in a secluded house in Forks, avoiding him. Seven years living in a foreign city avoiding my past life. I spent all that time without giving any excuse or reason for what I did, just that I loved them and that I loved him.

But now that there is nothing left for me, now that I know that everyone is happy; Alice and Jasper have their family, Emmet met a girl named Rose that loves cars as much as him, my parents are happy, he is happy with his wife, I know that is the time for me to leave for good and share with the world what happened, what I did, to share with them my betrayal, my crime and my sin.

Eight years ago I was happy, loving the man of my life, having a job that satisfied my needs, loving my parents, giggling with my best friend about one day having 2.5 kids and a white picket fence near my in laws' house. Spending my first Christmas with him, our first spring and the beginning of our first summer, eight years ago I had the suspicion that he was going to propose the day of his birthday. Eight years ago everything was destroyed.

Eight years ago I took a trip to Port Angeles with the purpose of going shopping. I really wanted to pick up a watch that he liked when we went together the last time. His birthday was coming soon and I wanted to give him that. Time. While getting out of the store somebody took me and robbed everything I had. Whoever did that to me took my body, my soul and my mind but to be honest the only thing that I was thinking about was pleading to God for them not to take the watch, not to take his time. I can just remember blonde hair and black skin, then nothing. I just pleaded for his watch.

They left me in the ally, dirty, filthy and dead. Blood was rolling down my thighs, my clothes were damaged. I could feel grime on my cheeks and a horrendous smell of sweat and garbage. They made me become worse than trash. I recovered my breath, fixed my clothes and took myself to my car and to our house where I tried to clean everything that happened. Nothing helped.

I tried to forget but every time he touched me or looked at me with concern I just knew that I was too dirty and that I couldn't contaminate him. That was my betrayal.

A month passed and I committed my crime. Those people who took my innocence that I had saved for my love, for our wedding night had put a life inside of me. I ended up taking that life away.

That night when he came back home and found me with my bags at the door, I told him that I didn't want him anymore, that he wasn't good enough, and that he was a distraction. I committed my sin because I lied. I left him with tears in his eyes, time around his wrist and my heart in his hands.

So love if you received this I just want you to understand that I was the one that you couldn't want, the one that wasn't good enough, the one that became a distraction. That could contaminate everything with just one touch.

I love you and believe me, it was for the best. It hurts but I am not sorry for taking this disturbing zombie that I had become out of your lives.

With love, your swan.

^O^

Edward closed the letter and took a deep breath. He couldn't believe what had happened to his love. It was his 30th time reading the letter since he got it that morning. He could feel the trace of the huge smile that he got when he read that the infamous packet was from her. Time has passed but he still loved her.

After he read the letter for the first time and opened the beautiful leather watch he received the call. His sister was sobbing trying to tell him how sorry she was. Trying to explain him that his love has killed herself, trying to tell him that he didn't have a reason or hope to stay alive anymore, she has died so eventually he would die.

He read the letter again and again praying that maybe it was just a hoax or waiting to wake up to realize that everything was just a nightmare. But deep down he knew that the hole in his chest was too strong to be just a lie.

_She had it all wrong_ he thought. Since she left that the day for those reasons that were understandable, he stopped living. He did what was needed like her, he sought solicitude to avoid their past lives like her, he breathed just to please his system like her.

After the first two years he found the guts to visit Renee and Charlie. He went to their house insisting to know where she was, how she was. They didn't have an answer. Just that she was out of the country and that they only had her email. After that he tried to send her a message. He would spend nights writing letters upon letters telling her that he loved her, that he wanted her, that he couldn't live without her. He didn't have the guts to send them, because she left and the anger was still in his system.

He met Tanya and he started thinking that maybe he could have that normal life that he so much desired with Bella. They dated, they had sex, they moved in together, they married and then they divorced. When asked what was the reason, he could only answer with the truth; that when they had sex he imagined that her strawberry blond hair was chocolate, that when he reached his orgasm he screamed Bella's name, that when they got married he said _I do _to his vision of Bella. That after two years he couldn't touch his wife anymore. That he just had eyes for one woman and that woman left him and took his heart to a corner of the world.

^O^

Days passed and Edward went back to his routine with the change that he read the letter before going out of the house and before going to sleep.

The funeral came and he was the only one brave enough to see her body. Not even deceased she looked like a zombie.

He moved back to his parents' house to be able to be near the cemetery. He wrote a letter everyday telling her that he loved her. That he appreciated everything she did for him and that he couldn't live without her.

Two years after her funeral, the news informed the murder of two men that had been terrorizing the area of Port Angeles for more than a decade. Some blond guy named James and a black man named Laurent. Edward smiled for the first time since her death that day, glad that maybe the men that ruined their happiness were dead.

Ten years after her death, he called a family meeting and read out loud the infamous letter. He thought that they deserved to know the truth. She was dead and he was dead, the only thing left in his life was to tell the world that the love of his life was the victim of a crime, that he was the victim of a human betrayal and that their lives were the victims of an immortal sin.

She gave him time in a silver form that allowed him to live a normal life and then time in a leather form that allowed him to wait until that day that they would be together forever with his love lost and an infinite time full of their innocence and their smiles.

Twenty years after her funeral Edward couldn't fight anymore, he spent 28 years without his love, his companion, his soul. He decided to go back to her abandoned house in Forks, trying to find and live through the hints of her scent. The freesias and the sunshine and the smiles and her innocence, he gave up that day while sobbing to her pillows. He gave up that day with the hope of joining his love, his swan, his Bella.


End file.
